For sophisticated sales processes, companies generally maintain computer systems that track a substantial amount of information about customers and potential customers. Such computer systems are commonly referred to as customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
Another tool that is commonly used in sophisticated sales processes is a sales playbook. A sales playbook defines a sequence of steps to be performed by a user, such as sales personnel, marketing personnel, customer support personnel and other users in an organization, when engaging a prospect. A sales playbook can be implemented on a computer, herein called a computerized sales playbook system. A sales playbook includes several playbook elements, some of which include instructions, content and the like to be used when engaging a prospect.
While some computerized sales playbook systems have access to data in a customer relationship management system, the data in the two computer systems generally are maintained through separate processes. In other words, one or more users update data in the CRM system, and separately one or more users update data in the computerized sales playbook system.
The steps of the sales process often are situational, in that they depend on the status of the prospect in the sales process. This situational nature can be expressed by a set of rules that determine, based on data about a prospect such as from a CRM system, whether a playbook, or action within a playbook, or specific content in the playbook, is provided to a user.